Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Jeremiah 29:1,4-7; Luke 17:11-19

The Region Between

Yesterday we attended an urban church bursting with life built up on the property of an older, defunct version of presbyterianism. The church embraces the Black, African, European, Hispanic, Street, Campus, and Commuter* cultures of the city. The Powerpoint scriptures in English were sub-texted in Spanish. We sang in English and, once, in some African tongue led by someone from that continent. It all felt native and right. Moreover, it was a front-loading church – the first I have been to in a very long time. Very effective preaching that connected with an amazing diversity of people while lifting up the name of Jesus and power of God.

Since this was a PCA church, my being PCUSA was a fact I did not mention in the coffee room chat. (We had come from out of town to meet a nephew on a bike-a-thon for whom the church was a stop over.) As with Jews and Samaritans, the divides within religious traditions can run deep. Jesus called the Samaritan ex-leper - the one out of ten who came back to thank him - a “foreigner” (allogeneis), which feels a bit extreme. Maybe that's the intention, since the gospel is a kind of prelude for the whole shift in Luke-Acts from the Jewish-calling to the Gentile (“foreign”)-calling of the emergent church. Only Luke among the gospels writes this story. It is set in the region between Samaria and Galilee.

There is no region between Samaria and Galilee. (see David Lose at WorkingPreacher.org) It is an altogether literary construction. No such place. Right? Except there is. There always is. What is “geography”, after all, but the changing social perception of our environment, of ourselves - of God? Maps have to be redrawn all the time, and there are maps than do not follow political lines. So it is for this region-between in today's gospel. It is the place where healing happens. Where the divide long set between the “right” people and the “wrong” people is crossed. Even between orthodoxy and heterodoxy: could Jesus have expected a Samaritan leper to present himself to Jewish priests? Perhaps a leprous Samaritan will do things other Samaritans would never brook. But that in itself indicates a hugely changed geography where we acknowledge our needs irrespective of our allegiances. The alternative would be denial. Or the temptation to miminalize. "Oh, it doesn't really hurt. It just looks kind of bad." Maybe a little problem with pride. Or to “bear up”, and all those other heroic moves that, for all their style, leave lepers leprous for want of asking. That's why Jeremiah tells the Jewish exiles to get a life. They're in Babylon. “It is yourcountry now. Stop whining. Come to me here and be healed.” The region-betweenin the gospel is Luke's version of the exilic frontier where the writing trespasses the limits of the landscape. For we now find ourselves in that place, where, when Jesus saves people, the signs directing traffic have to be rewritten: too much traffic is flowing by uncharted routes. The urban church we visited yesterday, in some key strategic ways, had understood this, and claimed the new turf. But it happens anywhere where Jesus heals. 

Let's change location: the desert of northern New Mexico. While at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center we have been profoundly moved by worship wherein a Jewish rabbi helped lead the Lord's Supper. No, he was not "messianic". That might seem as impossible as a Samaritan going to a Jewish priest. But here they are, both, in writing. Likewise on another Sunday we enjoyed a sermon given by a Muslim woman from a nearby Islamic community in the same Eucharistic context. Sure, a vast theological abyss stretches between the ethos of Ghost Ranch and yesterday's church service in the city. Nonetheless, this difference is an instance of that “region between Samaria and Galilee” where Jesus walks. It is a region more surprising, complex, amazingly graceful, and enigmatic than even the rich cross-cultural intersections of a twenty-first century urban street-scape. The territory exposes the uncharted gaps in our familiar cartography.

The desert has always been a quirky and revealing place. One learns to exalt in the power of Jesus' healing without necessarily giving credence to all the signs erected by the institutions purporting to represent him “back in town”. To use a Calvinistic point of reference, all persons and religious institutions are fundamentally flawed (“depraved” is the traditional parlance). They all failed Jesus at the cross. They still do. The flaws are not a language problem, as though our terms were merely too limited. It is the way we reference our language that is limited, prescribing with such ease such matters as who can and who cannot call on Jesus. Or, like Job's friends, who, resorting to conventional orthodoxies, fail to understand the nature of his sickness, or to see the subtle faultlines in their facile piety. That's a sin problem. Not a language problem. In fact, there is enough slippage in our speech and writing to unveil God at every turn of our existence. Today's texts are a case in point. We, like the Jews in exile, are in uncharted territory. It is there, in the exile, that Scripture will be (re)written as a part of Israel's healing. Ditto for the gospel. We are in the land where the resurrected Jesus walks and heals, but is not always recognized. It is a between-land, and all the maps and census data are out of date. Sometimes those who call “Jesus, Jesus” wrapped in the paraments of the times fail to perceive him utterly, even as Sadducees and Pharisees failed to recognize the very flesh and blood God of their tradition. Sometimes those who do not call his name, nonetheless recognize his Spirit in the incarnate touch of mystery in which they stand convicted and judged as creatures formed in his Word. 

O Christ in heaven, 
stretch your hand to this infected skin 
by which we show the world our surfaces 
so that in our sickness from which passers by avert their eyes 
you might cleanse us 
and make us transparent to them 
from our inmost hearts to the farthest stars
and what between them lies.

*We'll up the ante on Paul's recommendations for head gear and put caps on everybody.

© 2010 Andy Gay